Okay, when I said a chance to get on Conan, I didn’t actually mean get “on” Conan—I don’t know Conan personally, but from what I’ve heard, he’s a fairly private guy.

But you can get on his show… you know, the one on TBS…

Conan O’Brien and Ricky Gervais have teamed up to find the next comedy star!

That’s right! It’s an opportunity for you—and everyone else reading this blog—to record and submit 3 minutes of comedy.

See, Ricky has developed a new APP for the iPhone that allows you to say something into the phone and it tweets it automatically. He’s calling this app “Just sayin’.”

The contest is called the “Just Sayin’ Stand Up” contest and it’s happening right now; entries are open September 20th to October 21st with winners to be announced on November 7th. Wait—that’s my twins birthdays!

All you have to do is visit the contest site page, download the app to your iPhone and do your best 3 minutes.

Don’t have an iPhone—too bad!

No, wait! Come back! I was just kidding! If you don’t have an iPhone, you can still submit via a special portal on the Just Sayin’ website.

Are you still here? What are you waiting for?! Go get the app or submit via the portal and see if you can get your funny-ass on Conan!

Remember, it’s T.V. so it must be original, clean material and appropriate to air. No slanderous jokes, nothing that defames others… so, he’s taken all the fun out of it… it’s still a awesome opportunity!

Patton Oswalt is a comedian, an actor, a writer and a voice talent. He’s done all of what we comedians strive to do and more. Basically, Dude rocks!

He was recently keynote speaker at the 3rd annual Just For Laughs Comedy Conference in Montreal. In typical Patton Oswalt style he opened the speech with a bit of self-deprecation, (see, the best still use it!).

Here’s what’s interesting: instead of giving some kind of motivation speech to the troops, Patton read two open letters that he wrote; the first, to the comedians in the room and the second to the brass that runs this industry.

The result was a speech that was far more motivational than a speech that was intended to motivate.

In our classes, we talk about getting your content out, getting it seen and continuing to create more content. We talk about utilizing the internet to enhance your presence. So does Patton Oswalt and he knows a thing or two about this.

But I can’t do it justice by blathering on about it. Read them below. These will be more worth your time than anything else you read with regard to comedy this week!

Here’s Letter Number one:

Dear comedian in 2012:

How are you? I am good. In answer to your last letter, the mozzarella sticks at the Irvine Improv do taste weird. I’m taking your advice and sticking with the nachos.

Hey, ‘know what I was thinking the other day? Everything I know about succeeding as a comedian and ultimately as an artist is worthless now, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I started doing comedy in the summer of 1988. That was a different time, wasn’t it? Joe Piscopo was president, Mary Lou Retton won the Cold War, and Andy Kindler turned 50

If I hadn’t popped that goddamn ‘P’, the Piscopo joke would’ve annihilated.

When I say everything I know about succeeding a comedian is worthless, I know what I’m talking about because everything I know became worthless twice in my lifetime.

The first time was the evening of May 22, 1992. I’d been doing standup almost four years at that point, and that was Johnny Carson’s last ever Tonight Show.

Up until that night, the way you made it in comedy was very clear, simple, straightforward. You went on Carson, you killed, you got called over to the couch, and the next day you had your sitcom and your mansion, and you’re made. Just ask Drew Carey and Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres. And Bill Clinton. That’s how you did it.

But now, Johnny was gone and he wasn’t coming back.

All the comedians I remember starting out with in D.C., all the older ones, told me over and over again ‘you gotta work clean, you gotta get your five minutes, and you gotta get on Carson.’ And it all comes down to that.

And in one night, all of them were wrong. And not just wrong, they were unmoored. They were drifting. A lot of these bulletproof comics I’d opened for, whose careers seemed pre-destined, a lot of them never recovered from that night. You’ll never hear their names. They had been sharks in a man-made pond and had been drained. They decided their time had passed.

Keep that in mind for later. They had decided their time had passed.

The second time everything I knew about comedy became worthless has been petty much every day for the last three years.

I know that’s not an exact date. Some other younger, not yet famous name in this room – you are going to pinpoint that date 20 years from now. But for now, every day for about the last few years will have to suffice.

I just want to give you a brief timeline of my career up to this point, when I knew it was all changing again. Listen to my words very carefully. Two words will come up again and again and they’re going to come back later along with that phrase “they decided” and people are going to carry me around the room.

I was lucky enough to get hired onto King of Queens in 1998. I had nine years on that show. Money, great cast, even better writers, a lot of fun. I bought a house. Then I was lucky enough to get cast as a lead voice in a Pixar movie in 2007. Acclaim, money, I got to meet a lot of my heroes. Then I was lucky enough to get cast on The United States of Tara on Showtime. I got to watch Toni Collette work. I got to perform Diablo Cody’s writing. After which, I was lucky enough to get cast in Young Adult, which is where I got to make out with Charlize Theron. I will use that as an icebreaker if i ever meet Christina Ricci.

I’ve been lucky enough to be given specials on HBO, Comedy Central, and Showtime. As well as I’ve been lucky enough to release records on major labels, and I was lucky they approached me to do it. And that led to me being lucky enough to get Grammy nominations.

I know that sounds like a huge ego-stroking credit dump. But if you listened very carefully, you would have heard two words over and over again: “lucky” and “given.” Those are two very very dangerous words for a comedian. Those two words can put you to sleep, especially once you get a taste of both being “lucky” and being “given.” The days about luck and being given are about to end. They’re about to go away.

Not totally. There are always comedians who will work hard and get noticed by agents and managers and record labels. There will always be an element of that. And they deserve their success. And there’s always going to be people who benefit from that.

What I mean is: Not being lucky and not being given are no longer going to define your career as a comedian and as an artist.

Remember what I said earlier about those bulletproof headliners who focused on their 5 minutes on the Tonight Show and when it ended they decided their opportunity was gone? They decided. Nobody decided that for them. They decided.

Now, look at my career up to this point. Luck, being given. Other people deciding for me.

In the middle of the TV shows and the albums and the specials, I took a big chunk of my money and invested it in a little tour called The Comedians of Comedy. I put it together with my friends, we did small clubs, stayed in shitty hotel rooms, packed ourselves in a tiny van and drove it around the country. The tour was filmed for a very low-budget documentary that I convinced Netflix to release. That became a low-budget show on Comedy Central that we all still own a part of, me and the comedians. That led to a low budget concert film that we put on DVD.

At the end of it, I was exhausted, I was in debt, and I wound up with a wider fanbase of the kind of people I always dreamed of having as fans. And I built that from the ground up, friends and people I respected and was a fan of.

And I realize now I need to combine both of the lessons I’ve learned.

I need to decide more career stuff for myself and make it happen for myself, and I need to stop waiting to luck out and be given. I need to unlearn those muscles.

I’m seeing this notion take form in a lot of my friends. A lot of you out there. You, for instance, the person I’m writing to. Your podcast is amazing. Your videos on your YouTube channel are getting better and better every single one that you make, just like when we did open mics, better and better every week. Your Twitter feed is hilarious.

Listen, I’m doing the Laugh Trench in Milwaukee next week. Is there any chance for an RT?

Your friend, Patton Oswalt

Letter number two:

Last month I turned in a script for a pilot I co-wrote with Phil Rosenthal who has had a share of luck and success I can only dream of. Thanks for the notes you gave me on the pilot script. I’m not going to be implementing any of them.

And no, I’m not going to call you “the enemy” or “the man.” I have zero right to say that based on the breaks I’ve gotten from you over the years. If I tried to strike a Che Guevara pose, you would be correct in pointing out that the dramatic underlighting on my face was being reflected up from my swimming pool.

I am as much to blame for my uneasiness and realization of late that I’m part of the problem, that I’m half asleep and more than half complacent.

And I’m still not going to implement your notes. And I’m quoting Phil Rosenthal on this, but he said after we read your notes – and I’m quoting him verbatim – “We’re living in a post-Louie world, and these notes are from a pre-According to Jim world.”

I just read a letter to my fellow comedians telling them what I’m about to tell you, but in a different way. Here it is.

You guys need to stop thinking like gatekeepers. You need to do it for the sake of your own survival.

Because all of us comedians after watching Louis CK revolutionize sitcoms and comedy recordings and live tours. And listening to "WTF With Marc Maron" and "Comedy Bang! Bang!" and watching the growth of the UCB Theatre on two coasts and seeing careers being made on Twitter and Youtube.

Our careers don’t hinge on somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction. There are no gates. They’re gone. The model for success as a comedian in the ’70s and ’80s? That was middle school. Remember, they’d hand you a worksheet, fill in the blanks on the worksheet, hand it in, you’ll get your little points.

And that doesn’t prepare you for college. College is the 21st century. Show up if you want to, there’s an essay, there’s a paper, and there’s a final. And you decide how well you do on them, and that’s it. And then after you’re done with that, you get even more autonomy whether you want it or not because you’re an adult now.

Comedians are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that if we’re not successful, it’s not because we haven’t gotten our foot in the door, or nobody’s given us a hand up. We can do that ourselves now. Every single day we can do more and more without you and depend on you less and less.

If we work with you in the future, it’s going to be because we like your product and your choices and your commitment to pushing boundaries and ability to protect the new and difficult.

Here’s the deal, and I think it’s a really good one.

I want you, all of the gatekeepers, to become fans. I want you to become true enthusiasts like me. I want you to become thrill-seekers. I want you to be as excited as I was when I first saw Maria Bamford’s stand-up, or attended The Paul F. Tompkins show, or listened to Sklarbro Country….

I want you to be as charged with hope as I am that we’re looking at the most top-heavy with talent young wave of comedians that this industry have ever had at any time in its history.

And since this new generation was born into post-modern anything, they are wilder and more fearless than anything you’ve ever dealt with. But remind yourselves: Youth isn’t king. Content is king. Lena Dunham’s 26-year-old voice is just as vital as Louis CK’s 42-year-old voice which is just as vital as Eddie Pepitone’s 50-something voice.

Age doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all about what you have to say and what you’re going to say. Please throw the old fucking model away.

Just the tiny sampling at this amazing festival…. I’m excited to not be the funniest person in the room. It makes me work harder and try to be better at what I do. So be as excited and grateful as I am.

And if in the opportunities you give me, you try to cram all this wildness and risk-taking back in to the crappy mimeographic worksheet form of middle school, we’re just going to walk away. We’re not going to work together. No harm no foul. We can just walk away.

You know why we can do that now? Because of these. (Oswalt holds up an iPhone)

In my hand right now I’m holding more filmmaking technology than Orsen Welles had when he filmed Citizen Kane.

I’m holding almost the same amount of cinematography, post-editing, sound editing, and broadcast capabilities as you have at your tv network.

In a couple of years it’s going to be fucking equal. I see what’s fucking coming. This isn’t a threat, this is an offer. We like to create. We’re the ones who love to make shit all the time. You’re the ones who like to discover it and patronize it support it and nurture it and broadcast it. Just get out of our way when we do it.

If you get out of our way and we fuckin’ get out and fall on our face, we won’t blame you like we did in the past. Because we won’t have taken any of your notes, so it’ll truly be on us.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the stuff uploaded to Youtube. There are sitcoms now on the internet, some of them are brilliant, some of them are “meh,” some of them fuckin suck. At about the same ratio that things are brilliant and “meh” and suck on your network.

If you think that we’re somehow going to turn on you later if what we do falls on its face, and blame you because we can’t take criticism? Let me tell you one thing: We have gone through years of open mics to get where we need to get. Criticism is nothing to us, and comment threads are fucking electrons.

Amateur Comedians Only!

Here’s something fun and it’s for amateurs only! That’s right. No professionals allowed to submit to this contest. This gives a beginning comedian an opportunity to get into a Nationally televised competition and get exposure completely free! But you have to get on it, because this deadline is quickly approaching! (July 12th, 2012).

So get your 2-minute video clip read and submit it to their comedy competition page. Be sure and read the rules and stuff to make sure you meet the requirements. It’s a typical contest for television. Here are the basics:

Be clean

All original material only

Nothing controversial (judged by the network)

Nothing offensive

Nothing slanderous

Nothing that defames others (Wow there goes my whole act!)

If you get selected, you get flown to New York City to be on the Today Show, which has around six million viewers! That’s a lot of exposure for one morning.

So get your set together and upload it to their site. Here’s the thing: you cannot submit a link to a video, you have to submit a file from your computer.

What Should I Submit?

It’s a two-minute contest so your material should get right to the point and have a laugh point every 18-20 seconds. It should have crystalized surprise so that the punch lines are tight and trigger laughs. Utilize some variation of a quick set up, punch and possibly an act-out. The submission doesn’t necessarily have to have a beginning, middle and end, but if you can make that happen in two minutes, go for it. These are just guidelines, of course so don’t let it stop you from submitting. I’ve seen some unexpected videos get chosen for these things. Just have fun!

Comedy’s Dead! Yeah, I heard that from some young comedian the other day.

Well don’t tell that to Al Martin, owner of the New York Comedy Club and The Broadway Comedy Club, who’s now opening his third comedy club, in New York called the Greenwich Village Comedy Club. It’ll be opening this July in, you guessed it—Greenwich Village.

But wait, that’s not all!

Co-owners Patrick Milligan, David Kimowitz, and brothers Cris and Paul Italia, (yes the same ones who are partners in the company “Cringe Humor,” that has spent ten years managing and producing projects for comedians), are opening yet another comedy club called The Stand. It’s just a short subway hop north of The Greenwich Village Comedy Club.

That’s two—count ‘em—two comedy clubs in a city that already has a dozen or so, not counting open mics and improv theaters. At this rate, the comedy scene in New York City is growing at a rate eight time that of the national economy.

I don’t know if clubs going to follow the same business plan as many of the clubs in L.A. by having “bringer shows” masquerade as real comedy shows, but with names like Bill Burr, Artie Lange, Jim Norton and Dante Nero appearing at the club, I don’t think they’ll have a problem putting butts in the seats.

What I like about guys like Al Martin and the boys over at Cringe is that they’ve been in the comedy business and have been focused on developing comedians for over a decade now. They’re not just fly-by-nights who would just as easily open a titty-bar for the convenience of having a cash cow. They are into stand-up comedy and they have a genuine focus.

Both owners have also professed an understanding and commitment to the traditions of the New York comedy scene (i.e.: Lenny Bruce, George Carlin) and apply that and keep it present in their clubs. The difference is that The Stand will not be imposing the two-drink minimum. They’re hoping that their cocktails and food will be too tempting to resist.

Here’s the thing: Comedy is a live endeavor. You get up in front of a different audience each and every night you perform. Even if you’re doing the same material, the audience is different, the club may be different and the night is different so the dynamics change. Therefore, it is essential that you capture each and every performance by recording it either with the use of audio (digital recorder) or video.

With the availability of Flip cams and video recorders on iPhones, Droids and other smartphones, there’s almost no reason not to be able to video record each set that you do. Sometimes there are restrictions at certain clubs and if that’s the case there should be no reason not to audio record every set.

Each set we do as comedians on stage gives us an opportunity to learn something new. We can try a new joke, make a discovery on stage involving a new inspiration we got while telling a joke, or respond to a heckler or other live moment in the audience. The recorder is also essential if you have a bad set. That’s right! You want to review those bad sets too!

We learn most from our mistakes and when we record a bad set, that recorder is like a black box on an airplane that goes down. The recorder has everything that led up to the crash and you can learn a lot from it. Sure it hurts to watch or listen to a bad set, but if you’re listening to the bad set you’ll discover new things. I used to hate to listen to a bad set.

But you know what? Now I rarely if ever have a bad set. How did that happen? By constantly working on my sets by listening to them constantly and eliminating mistakes.

We all hate to listen to ourselves at first, because our voices sound so “weird” on a recorder.

They do, don’t they?

But that’s how our voice sounds to other people. We hear our voices differently because we hear our voices through our Eustachian tubes and it filters our vocal nuances. If you keep listening to your voice on a recorder you’ll actually start to hear it the way other people hear it whenever you speak. So get used to it an record yourself!

When you do a set, take the audio recorder with you on the stage, take it out of your pocket and set it right on the stool on the stage. Doesn’t matter if they audience sees it. I remember when I used to watch Jerry Seinfeld workout at the clubs. He would bring his recorder up onstage with him and set it on the stool. I would think to myself, “Wow, he’s constantly working on it, isn’t he?”

Jerry Seinfeld is financially the most successful comedian of all time.

Comedian Lesson:

Learn from the best and bring your recorder on stage. Always!

Best Audio Recorders:

Here are some recorders that I recommend. Personally I use the Sony, but I’ve also owned Olympus. Both solid products. I like to stay in a medium to higher end product, because if I’m recording a set and it goes really well, the recording could actually be used to create a CD that I can use as a demo or sell at a show… If you have other recommendations, please share them in the comments section. If you want to do the same, splurge a little and go for the Sony.